Follow this link to my BLOCKBUSTER STORY of how Brett Kimberlin, a convicted terrorist and perjurer, attempted to frame me for a crime, and then got me arrested for blogging when I exposed that misconduct to the world. That sounds like an incredible claim, but I provide primary documents and video evidence proving that he did this. And if you are moved by this story to provide a little help to myself and other victims of Mr. Kimberlin’s intimidation, such as Robert Stacy McCain, you can donate at the PayPal buttons on the right. And I thank everyone who has done so, and will do so.

Monday, January 21, 2013

If It’ll Save One Life...

That’s a refrain that I hear from
anti-gun types now and then. For
instance here is a tweet Piers Morgan wrote the other day:

Well, that all sounds nice, but
it is ultimately childish thinking.
Adults recognize that we often choose to value other things over safety
all the time.

For instance, take cars. Cars kill far more people
each year than guns, but no one would seriously talk about banning
them. But why not? We could limit car ownership to emergency
services (police, fire departments, EMT’s and so on), entities for whom
automobile transportation more than likely saves lives on balance, and
automobiles for the delivery of goods (such as groceries to the store or mail
to your mailbox) and then everyone else?
Well, you will just have to ride a bike or walk. If it would save one life, or indeed save one
child’s life, isn’t it worth it?

Well, no, we have decided it isn’t worth it. We think of the staggering inconvenience that
such a lifestyle would impose on us. Imagine
having to live within walking distance of your job. Imagine having to live within walking
distance of your grocery store. And of
course would your job treat you decently if it knew that you would have to move
from your home every time you wanted to quit?
Would your grocery store give you good prices if it knew that you
probably didn’t have the time and energy to go to a competitor? And either you live within walking distance
of local movie theaters, night life and so on, or you just do without.

Or perhaps you also allow for an
exception for public transportation.
Some people are perfectly happy with that, but millions of people who could ride the bus every day choose not
to and thus endanger the public with their cars. Oh sure, you might think that you present no
danger and maybe you are right. But
statistically speaking it is far deadlier than any gun and yet we allow you to
keep your car.

And that is fine, I agree with
that. But let’s not delude ourselves as
to what we are doing. We are choosing to
value something else more than human life.
We are choosing every day to reject the logic of “if it saves one child’s
life it’s worth it.”

But those are accidents!—you might
plead. And generally they are, and that
is an arguable distinction. To
paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, even a dog knows the difference between being
stumbled over and being kicked.

But we also often choose intentional
death over other values. For instance,
if a man breaks into your home, every state in the union says you are allowed
to use lethal force to stop that person.
What you are protecting at that moment could be anything from your life,
to your property, or protecting you or someone you love from sexual assault or
kidnapping or who knows what. Likewise,
outside of the home, deadly
force is allowed when fighting off not just a murderer, but rapists and/or
kidnappers. So the law is saying that
you are not only allowed to value your life above a criminal's, but you are also
allowed to value a man or woman’s right to withhold consent from sex, and a
person’s personal freedom more than the life of a criminal. (And of course, you are allowed to use deadly
force to protect other people’s lives, or to save them from rape or
kidnapping.)

On the other hand, most states do
not allow you to use deadly force merely to defend your property. In the eyes of the law, it just isn’t worth
it to take a man’s life to save your car.

[Please note that none of this is
legal advice. I am a lawyer but not your
lawyer and you should seek legal advice about when and if you can apply deadly
force in self-defense. Instead I am
discussing the law to discuss the values of our society so we can decide what
policies we should adopt.]

And one really doesn’t have to
look far for statements from many great patriots and other luminaries talking
about the need to sacrifice life for other values. So while we might take Patton’s admonition
under advisement that “the object of war is not to die for your country but to make
the other guy die for his,” we can remember that nonetheless many patriots have
been willing to die for their country. For
instance it would be easy to simply quote Patrick Henry. So I will:

Is life so dear, or
peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid
it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give
me liberty or give me death!

Or look to the official state
motto of New Hampshire: “Live free or Die.”

Or take these great words that
William Wallace didn’t actually say, but stirs the heart nonetheless:

Ah, it gets me every time. And I want to focus on just one part of that
speech:

Wallace: I am William Wallace. And I see a whole
army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as
free men, and free men you are. What would you do without freedom? Will you
fight?

Veteran soldier:
Fight? Against that? No, we will run; and we will live.

Wallace: Aye, fight
and you may die. Run and you'll live -- at least a while. And dying in your
beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this
day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our
enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!!!

Yeah, as I said, William Wallace,
didn’t say it. His descendant, Randall
Wallace did, in a script for a movie that is largely fictional but nonetheless
beautiful. And putting aside historical
accuracy ask yourself about the philosophy being expounded on: is (Randall) Wallace wrong? Consider what he is saying. He is saying that there are times when it
makes sense to risk or trade your life, for freedom and the freedom of your fellow
citizens. Is he wrong?

And other examples abound. Just before he died, Nathan Hale was purported
to say, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”

Or take the Declaration of Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, adopted by
the Continental Congress on July 6, of 1775, at a point of time when we were
not yet seeing independence, but we were openly fighting the British:

With hearts
fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and
the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our
beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been
compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with
unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our
liberties; being with our [one] mind resolved to d[i]e Free-men rather than
live Slaves.

The same document later declares:

In our own native
land, in defence of the freedom that is our birth-right, and which we ever
enjoyed till the late violation of it--for the protection of our property,
acquired solely by the honest industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves,
against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them
down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger
of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

You can read the whole thing, here. Joseph Warren, a lesser known patriot of the Revolutionary
era: “Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we
will not tamely submit -- appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we
determine to die or be free.”

Another from Warren:

Our country is in
danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but
we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the
resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the
important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet
unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.

Washington:

The hour is fast
approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our
bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are free men,
fighting for the blessings of Liberty -- that slavery will be your portion, and
that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men.”

John Adams: “Liberty must at all
hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we
had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their
ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.”

And this is off topic, but this
quote from Adams is very interesting:

It has ever been my
hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of
two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among
them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would
still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we
can.

At the time of the Revolution our
population was only 4 million. Only recently did it pass the upper end of
his vision, the 300 million mark. How
could he even imagine us sustaining a population that large? Without either massive changes in technology
or expansion of territory (of which we have had both), it was simply impossible. And yet his vision has largely come true,
hasn’t it?

Benjamin Franklin: “It is a
common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we
are fighting for their liberty in defending our own.”

Patrick Henry, again: “Three
millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country
as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send
against us.” We might be invincible, but that doesn't mean this approach wouldn't have casualties.

The Declaration of Independence, after declaring that they were
fighting for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, ends by saying “And
for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of
divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and
our sacred Honor.” Translation they were
willing to put their lives and fortunes on the line for this.

Thomas Jefferson: “What signify a
few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

This sentiment was echoed by John
Stuart Mill:

War is an ugly
thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral
and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The
person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more
important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no
chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men
than himself.

And of course there is Franklin’s
famous quote which makes it most explicit that he would prefer liberty to
safety: “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

And this is hardly the only
example. As we celebrate his birthday
today, we can remember that every day of his life as a civil rights leader, Martin
Luther King Jr. knew he was risking death.
And not just for himself but for his family. I mean those who challenged racism back then
had a very short lifespan. But he and
many other leaders decided it was worth it to push for freedom and an end to
racism. “No one really knows why they
are alive until they know what they would die for” he once said. Indeed, he went as far as to say that “A man
who won't die for something is not fit to live.”

And at the risk of
self-aggrandizement, I have made the same judgment. This is not an academic issue for me. I decided to tell the truth about Brett
Kimberlin and risk the consequences of angering a convicted terrorist. And regular readers of this site know that I have
paid a significant price for it. He has cost
my wife and I our jobs, attempted to frame me for a crime, gotten me arrested
on false charges (subsequently dropped), put bogus peace orders on me abridging
my freedom of speech (subsequently struck down) and I have been SWATted. And every time when I go out to my car, I check
under it for bombs, like the ones he planted in Speedway, Indiana. Why?
Because this fight is about freedom of expression and the right to receive
counsel, and stopping a man who thinks nothing of attempting to destroy the
lives of those who anger him and because I know if I don’t stop him he will
just keep doing it. I have decided that
some things are more valuable than just simply surviving and I put that belief
to practice.

(And if you are not a regular
reader and that last paragraph is news to you, read here.)

Which is not to put me in the
same category as those greats. To pick
one example, the danger I face is nothing compared to Dr. King. But that only drives home to me how shameful
it would be not to fight. If Dr. King
could stand up to the far more deadly terrorism of the KKK, how dare I refuse
to stand up to a punk like Brett Kimberlin?

So there is nothing alien in our culture
in the idea that some things are more valuable than life itself. Some of the greatest persons in history have
put that belief into practice. And I have
done the same in my own humble way.

“But,” you might protest, “it is
one thing to advocate for giving your own life, or giving of the life of adults
for freedom. But these are children.”

But do you think it would make a
difference? Do you think the founders
would have surrendered to the British if they only took twenty children hostage
and threatened to kill them if we didn’t end our rebellion?

We know Dr. King wasn’t persuaded
even by the murder of children. Four
little girls were murdered when the 16th Street Baptist Church was
bombed, and yet he didn’t tell people to call off the Civil Rights
Movement. He didn’t say, “its not worth
the lives of our children.” He said we
had to keep fighting for freedom and equality or else those children would have
died in vain. And often his
organization put children on the front lines to face the dogs and the
firehoses, not to mention how many times black children were placed directly in
harm’s way by being asked to commit the courageous act of going to school—courageous and dangerous because they were doing so as the first black children to go to a specific white
school. Dr. King and the Civil Rights
Movement as a whole placed children in harm’s way all the time and when they
died, it was not seen as a condemnation on their movement, but only on their
killers, and rightly so.

And let’s not forget that children
died on September 11, too. Al Qaeda has
said that they attacked us because we were not Muslims. So, should we repeal the guarantee of
religious freedom, declare Islam the official religion of America, and force everyone to convert? Would Piers Morgan declare that if it would
save one child’s life, it is worth it? I
don’t know what he would say, but even
the vast majority of Muslims don’t want that.

So we aren’t willing to do
anything, just to remain alive, are we?
We sacrifice life—including the lives of children—for other values all
the time.

And the bizarre thing is that
normally liberals get that. Consider,
for instance, the issue of how to interrogate prisoners. Any liberal who says he or she is against waterboarding
is saying something is more important than our lives. And don’t let them lie to you and pretend
that no good intelligence can be gathered this way. Leon
Panetta himself has admitted that it probably helped us kill bin Laden himself. And it just makes no logical sense to deny
that sometimes when you loosen their tongue they give good information, as I wrote
back then:

But the most
ridiculous claim is that it supposedly doesn’t work. Now of course pressuring anyone in any way to
get a mere confession is of dubious value.
Torturing a guy to say “I did it,” is unreliable. But if they are telling the truth, they can
tell you things that are objectively verifiable. Consider, for instance, this classic scene
from Dirty Harry:

[video no longer on
youtube]

The context of the
clip is this. The psychopath had buried
a girl alive and claimed he would give the location of the girl (giving them
the chance to save her) if they paid a ransom.
They paid, with Eastwood delivering it, but the man refused to give the
location, and so the torture in that scene followed [in which Eastwood
literally tortures him until he tells us where the girl is buried]. So it was a “ticking bomb” scenario. Also, alluded to and not shown, they find the
girl where the psycho said, but she was already dead. If memory serves she never had a chance of
being saved in time.

Now if that
hypothetical went to trial, the confession would be excluded from evidence (and
in theory the body might be, too).
Why? Not because it was
unreliable. Even in isolation the mere
fact he knew where the girl was buried was highly incriminating. But instead all of it, including the fact he
knew where the body was, would be excluded on the theory that even then torture
is not justified, and thus they wanted to remove an important incentive to
police to engage in such conduct.

So let’s please stop
the childish claim that waterboarding—hell, even torture—cannot be
effective. And let’s instead have the
adult conversation about whether we as a people believe it is morally justified
and if so, when.

We all know that even outright torture
can in fact work. And so if you oppose
it—and I do indeed oppose true torture, I just don’t consider waterboarding to
be true torture—you are saying that some things are worth sacrificing lives
for, even that of innocent children.

And recently we have seen liberal
opposition to the idea of armed school guards.
Not all liberals, but many. The most
common objection to this proposal (I mean, besides just plain blind opposition
to anything coming from the NRA), is that somehow kids are psychologically
damaged by seeing an armed officer. In a
letter,
the ACLU listed other reasons. For instance,
it will “unnecessarily pushing students out of school and into the juvenile and
criminal justice systems” because if the guards are police, they might arrest
the students for crimes rather than letting principals handle it less
severely. They go on to be concerned
that various kinds of disproportionate impacts will result. Whatever the merits of what they said, there is
no serious reason to think armed guards in a school wouldn’t make things
safer. And yet they oppose these
proposals. What happened to “if it would
save one child’s life...?”

So to say “even if we save one
child’s life it is worth it” is itself childish and simplistic thinking. Even if it was true that banning some or all
guns would save some children—and that is a doubtful point—it is simply not the
case that we will do absolutely everything to save lives, even the lives of
children. Now and then we have decided
that, on balance, it is better to have a chaos that occasionally kills people
and the freedom that comes with it, rather than perfect security. Of course few people put it as baldly as
saying that we sacrifice children for our freedom. We might not say it, but in fact we do it all the time.

And the Second Amendment is about
our freedom. Yes, it preserves the ability
of hunters to hunt, but that isn’t what it is about. And likewise it will protect a woman who is
being stalked by an abusive ex, when the police can’t or won’t protect her, but that isn’t why it was so important to the founders. Consider those to be other good reasons for supporting it. The militia clause of the Second Amendment is
inoperative, but it provides us a valuable clue as to why it exists: so we can
continue to have our minutemen militias, for the preservation of free states—the
states we live in and the United States of America. That is not just to save these entities just to save them, but to preserve their status as free states. It was certainly conceived in part to protect
us from foreign enemies, but it was just as much to make it possible for us to
resist tyranny here at home, should it ever arise.

---------------------------------------

Sidebar: One common argument against the right of rebellion is that
we supposedly wouldn’t stand a chance. I
find that to be a curious argument. How
often do the very same liberals who make this argument claim that it was impossible
to defeat the guerrillas of Vietnam, and the terrorists of Iraq and
Afghanistan? And now suddenly they
believe a guerilla campaign in America is doomed from the get-go? Anyone who says an American resistance is doomed
is demonstrating a remarkable ignorance of effective guerilla tactics.

And that is assuming it would be
citizens v. the government. Our military
doesn’t take an oath to the President, but to the Constitution of the United
States. How many in our military would
defy a truly tyrannical government in the unlikely scenario of justified
rebellion? If one looks to the history
of the last major rebellion on American soil, the Confederates were able to
take entire forts, ships, cannons, etc. and enjoyed the benefits of many soldiers
trained by the Union in their ranks and in their leadership And while they ultimately lost, they put up
four years of a dang good fight in a conventional war. Say what you will about the Confederates—I am
utterly opposed to their cause—you cannot deny they made a good run of it and
even came close to succeeding. For
instance, if the war went slightly worse in 1864, McClellan might have become
president and sued for peace. And in
Revolutionary times, America was even poorer in resources and manpower than the
Confederacy, and yet we won that war, or at least held out until the British
decided it wasn’t worth it. So it is
silly to write off this primary function of the Second Amendment as a fool’s
dream. It wouldn’t look anything like Red Dawn, but it wouldn’t be a cakewalk
for the government.

And again, I am not talking about
imminent action. I don’t expect to see
this happen even once in my lifetime.
But fundamental rights, such as the right to rebellion, are not for one
day but for all time.

---------------------------------------

Second sidebar: Doesn’t all of
this prove that Alex Jones is himself ultimately full of it. He agrees that we have a God-given right to
resist tyranny. And while I am no fan of
the man, even a broken clock is right two times a day.

But he also is a 9-11 truther
(like Brett
Kimberlin!), believing that George W. Bush was behind the attack.

Now it is easy to just blow off
trutherism. And we should blow it off as
a matter of fact. No, nineteen
Islamofacist terrorist from al Qaeda took down the towers by flying planes into
buildings. But our immediate rejection
of the factual case he is making has
us gloss over the implications of the theory.

Imagine by some crazy coincidence
that it was right, what does that imply.
This isn’t like the theory that we didn’t really land on the moon; that
suggests someone is lying to us, but that might even be argued to be a
forgiveable lie. And it isn’t like
Oliver Stone’s theory that a conspiracy of gay conservatives killed JFK
possibly in service of the military-industrial complex, because that becomes simply
a crime that has been unpunished. No,
folks, if you believe in this 9-11 truther nonsense, this means that our
government conspired to kill around three thousand ordinary citizens in order
to justify war against a foreign country.

If that actually happened, that’s
not a time to brood and complain. That
is a time to take up arms against your government. Oh, sure, given the government a reasonable time
to address it, to draw up articles of impeachment and remove the man
responsible (in this case, George W. Bush).
But Jones started making these claims right away and certain by 2004 or
so it was clear to him that Bush was never going to be impeached and removed
for this. So if he really believed it,
he would be talking revolutionary violence, wouldn’t he?

But he isn’t. And that, in my opinion, is proof that Jones
is not sincere about it. If he really
believed it, he wouldn’t have peddled his theory for the last decade, he would
have actually taken up arms. And the
fact he hasn’t demonstrates that he is a phony.

---------------------------------------

My wife and I have lost our jobs
due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an
attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up
to ten years. I know that claim sounds
fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these
claims using documentary and video evidence.
If you would like to help in the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin
accountable, please hit the Blogger’s Defense Team button on the right. And thank you.

Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing,
mostly for snark and site updates. And
you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent
Historyhere.
And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

---------------------------------------

Disclaimer:

I have accused some people,
particularly Brett Kimberlin, of
reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even
criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the
appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence
against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.

In the particular case of Brett
Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.

And for that matter, don’t go on
his property. Don’t sneak around and try
to photograph him. Frankly try not to
even be within his field of vision. Your
behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to
mention trespass and other concerns).

And do not contact his
organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.

The only exception to all that is
that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with
contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might
report. And even then if he tells you to
stop contacting him, obey that request. That
this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that
a person asks you to stop and you refuse.

And let me say something
else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t
believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.

If you claim you are against bullshit politics, please do a story on the bullshit fraud which fooled me for a while, and still fools many Conservatives (I am not a conservative).

I admire your tenacity, but let's see if you have the balls you claim, expose this bullshit. Conservative pundits on FOX pushed it for a while, Mike Huckabee ran for President on it, Neal Boortz was hired to push it.

But it's a fraud, not flawed, I mean it's literally a fraud.

http://fairtaxgoofy.blogspot.com/

I admit Fairtax sounded great, and if it was just half as amazing as Boortz claimed, what are we waiting for? We need an entirely new tax code, that is true. I have been preaching that for 30 years. Our tax code is horrible, unfixable. It can not be fixed, it must be replaced.

I never dreamed Boortz was getting paid to hawk a deliberate fraud. He seemed so sincere. If Fairtax was a fraud, surely Boortz would not only spot it, but he had the balls to expose it. Nothing scares Boortz right?

Turns out, the fine print in Fairtax scares Boortz. In fact if you ask him about it, he will block you from his twitter account, and before he left radio, he would not accept your call.

Neal might have been fooled by Fairtax at first -- it does sound great -- but it's clear after a time, he learned the fine print tricks that make Fairtax a goofy absurdity,.

Most of Fairtax revenue is not from personal retail sales. Boortz and Fairtax.org sell it as a personal consumption tax. And it is, they have personal retail sales tax.

But in that fine print are other taxes -- and the other taxes are much much larger than the retail sales tax. It's not that Fairtax has a few other taxes, Fairtax is a massive tax on city county and states, on all their operating expenditures, even capital invesments. Wages, pensions and benefits, paid by city county and states, are taxed 23%. No, the employee does not pay those, the employer -- the city county or state -- has to.

If your state has 2 billion dollars in "expenditures" on prisons, for example, including wages, pensions, construction, food, utlities, etc, your state would have to pay -- separately - the fed gov 430 million tax. No, I am not wrong. It's not only in the fine print, but Fairtax spokesmen defend it,. And, President Bush Tax Advisory Panel exposed this absurdity.

While there are good arguments on both sides, what bothers me is that AK 47advocates have no doubts whatsoever. They may in the end be correct, I think it's reasonable to limit automatic weapons, but I see both sides.

To claim Obama is some evil person, just fits in to the hate rhetoric that now fills the country.

Going back in history, the only thing close to this is pre - Civil War South. If you read those newspapers, and Southern books and speeches at the time, it's much like now. The hate is stunning.

Only, in the South, the government controlled what newspapers could say. The anti -incendiary laws, enacted by every slave state, made it a crime, punishable by whipping, to write, say or preach anything that would "dissatisfy" a slave. Hilarious that they were supposedly worried about making a slave unhappy.

But because of the growing fear of slave rebellion, any open discussion against slavery, or even preaching anything against it, owning a book that even questioned it, was against the law. While these laws against free speech came from a legit concern over slave rebellion, it was clear that either free speech had to go, or slavery had to go. So the Southern states decided free speech had to go.

The resulting hate spewed forth - not against the oppression of free speech, but against anyone who dared speak against slavery. They were the devil, evil, Lincoln was trying to force the women to "be" with black men, even walk down the street with black men.

About Me

Just a regular, sort of cranky moderately conservative lawyer, living in the greater Washington, D.C. and ruminating on law, life and the local spectator sport known as politics.
Btw, if you want to email me, write to edmd5.20.10 [at] gmail.com. I assume by now you understand that you are supposed to use one of those @ symbols for "[at]."